As I travel the world giving keynotes and supporting schools in the development of teaching and learning, I am struck by the wonderful quality of innovation in education. This is where I share some of the best ideas in the hope that it will inspire and help you to connect with others. For overseas friends, there is a Google Translator and a Glossary of Terms at the bottom of the page.
www.sustained-success.com

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Teaching the ASK model

Two of the schools I'm working with, one in Doncaster (UK) and the other in Cambewarra (Australia), are trying a new approach to their curriculum that places an emphasis on Attitudes and Skills, as well as Knowledge (ASK). In a previous blog, (see Teaching Attitudes on 18 March 2009) I shared the Attitudes work of Sandringham Primary School. Now, here's an insight into the Skills work that Cambewarra Primary School are doing.

Selecting five key thinking skills, Processing information, Reasoning, Inquiry, Creativity and Evaluation, Trent Burns and his colleagues are ensuring that at least one of these skills is at the heart of each lesson. For example, when studying the environmental impact of technologies, the children would be asked to "paraphrase" the contributions of another, and then to add a "reason" to that opinion or argument.

Of course, since the children would have to use their thinking skills in order to answer a question or complete a task, some might say the deliberate focus on a particular type of thinking is unnecessary. And yet to improve any skill, expert practice concerns itself with breaking the skill down into parts. For example, in addition to swimming from one side of the pool to the other, a swimmer wishing to improve his/her skills would be well advised to at times focus almost exclusively on head position, then perhaps on the timing of his/her arm strokes and maybe another time on the frequency of kicks. And so it is with thinking - breaking the whole skill down into parts so that the whole might be improved bit by bit.

Furthermore, Trent's students enjoy the added dimension that a focus on thinking skills brings to their lessons, referring frequently to the PRICE model either by identifying the skill they believe they are using to solve a task, or setting out to improve a particular skill by finding opportunities to practise it.

Look out for an update on their progress after my visit there in June.

About James

Having taught in primary, secondary, middle and special schools, I am now director of my own company. Committed to the creation of world-class education through improvements in teaching and learning, communication, creativity and leadership, I have a reputation as an inspirational keynote speaker and presenter. In 2008, I was listed among the Future500 by the Observer newspaper, a "definitive list of the UK's most forward-thinking and brightest innovators"
Along the way, I have trained with Edward de Bono at the University of Malta, qualified as an EAL teacher, co-founded a multi-million pound, award-winning regeneration project (N-RAIS), been an industrial quality controller, childcare officer at a school for deaf children and done some charity work in apartheid South Africa.
Today, as well as director of Sustained Success, I am the European coordinator for the international Community Designed Education network, and co-founder of p4c.com, an international resource and collaboration website for philosophy for children

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Glossary of Terms used on this blog

Effect Size - Referred to in this blog whilst writing about the work of Prof John Hattie, effect size measures provide a standardised index of how much impact interventions actually have. The measure is not a significance test, (in other words it does not identify whether there is a difference or not,) it tells us whether the difference is small or big.